Atmospheric carbon-dioxide hit its highest concentration in recorded history in May: 415 parts per million. The more greenhouse gases we emit, the more the planet warms, and the more we experience extreme and often deadly weather events.

Many of these disasters are so devastating that they can be seen from space.

In 2019 alone, satellites captured images of the northeastern US ravaged by a polar vortex event, Europe’s back-to-back deadly heat waves, and wildfires that spread through California as well as parts of Russia, Greenland, and Canada. Photos from space also show how Antarctic and Arctic glaciers are melting at unprecedented rates: The extent of Arctic sea is currently the second smallest it has been since 1979.

Every September, Arctic sea ice hits its minimum extent. Since the 1980s, that minimum has decreased by about 13% per decade.

In 1979, Arctic sea ice spanned about 2.7 million square miles (7 million square kilometers). By last month, the extent had dropped to 1.7 million square miles (4.3 million square kilometers). According to NASA data, this year has tied 2007 for the second-lowest sea ice extent on record. The worst year was 2012, when the ice shrank to under 1 million square miles (2.6 million square kilometers).

The report found that by the end of the century, higher seas and flooding could displace or affect 680 million people who live in low-lying coastal zones, along with 65 million citizens of small island states.

European Space Agency

Sea-level rise also increases the risk of flooding during high tides and storm surges.

As sea levels rise worldwide, that increases the amount of flooding storm surges can cause.

In September, Hurricane Dorian hit the Bahamas a Category 5 storm. With sustained wind speeds of 185 mph, Dorian brought up to 23 feet of storm surge in some areas.

NASA via Getty Images

Climate change also appears to be making hurricanes wetter and more sluggish.

Warming overall causes hurricanes to grow stronger and cause more devastation than they otherwise would because warmer air holds more water vapor, which enables tropical storms to unleash more precipitation.

Climate change is also causing hurricanes to move more slowly: Over the past 70 years or so, the speed of hurricanes and tropical storms has slowed about 10% on average, according to a 2018 study.

NOAA

Hurricane Dorian was a prime example of this trend: After it made landfall, the storm stalled over the Bahamas for 24 hours, dumping 30 inches of rain and causing devastating flooding.

Rising temperatures may also be linked to more frequent cold-weather snaps like the one that hit the US in January.

In general, a polar vortex is the term for the mass of low-pressure cold air that circulates in the stratosphere above the Arctic and Antarctic.

When the circulation of the polar vortex weakens, surges of frigid air splinter off and drift south. The freezing air is carried by the jet stream, a current of wind that extends around the northern hemisphere and divides the air masses in the polar region from those farther south.

But climate change may be altering the jet stream. Because temperatures are rising in the Arctic at double the rate of the rest of the planet, the difference between temperatures at the North Pole and continents at lower latitudes is decreasing. Less disparity in temperatures means less difference between air pressure levels, which weakens the jet stream. That can lead the jet stream to take longer, less direct paths.

If the jet stream wanders enough, that can disrupt the natural flow of the polar vortex.

NOAA/Handout via Reuters

The frequency of winter polar-vortex events has increased by up to 140% over the past four decades, a 2017 study found.

The January polar vortex forced 84 million Americans in the US Midwest and East Coast to contend with subzero temperatures. Some parts of Minnesota and Wisconsin saw windchill temperatures are as cold as minus 50 degrees Fahrenheit.

Getty Images

Temperature spikes are also linked to higher wildfire risk. This year, plumes of smoke that engulfed parts of Russia and Greenland were big enough to see from space.

That’s because warming leads winter snow cover to melt earlier, and hotter air sucks away the moisture from trees and soil, leading to dryer land. Decreased rainfall also makes for parched forests that are prone to burning.

Pierre Markuse/Flickr

That warming trend is becoming more and more apparent. This year is on pace to be the third hottest on record globally, according to Climate Central.

In the western US, the average wildfire season is 78 days longer than it was 50 years ago, according to the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions.

„We’re really seeing that window expanding, not only earlier into the spring but also later into the fall as things stay drier, longer,“ Leah Quinn-Davidson, a fire adviser for Humboldt County, California, previously told Business Insider. „We are at the point where we are in a crisis.“

NOAA

In California specifically, the portion of the state that burns from wildfires every year has increased more than five-fold since 1972, a recent study found.

Nine of the 10 biggest fires in the state’s history have occurred since the year 2003.

„Every heat wave occurring in Europe today is made more likely and more intense by human-induced climate change,“ the scientists wrote in July.

Rymdstyrelsen / Google / ESA

The frequency and severity of droughts are increasing, too.

Last summer, parts of England, France, and Germany faced one of the worst droughts in decades.

NASA models predict that droughts will become more common and extreme as temperatures rise. That could lead to food and water shortages and, consequently, conflicts between people competing for limited resources.

Lakes and reservoirs around the globe are also drying up, since evaporation rates skyrocket when temperatures climb.

The water level in the US‘ Lake Mead dropped 135 feet between 1984 and 2016. Many US farmers, as well as some cities in Arizona, Nevada, California, and Mexico, all rely on water from the lake (which comes from snow melt in the Rocky Mountains).

A 24-month projection released in 2018 by the US Bureau of Reclamation revealed that the reservoir water levels are barely skirting the 1,075-feet threshold. A drop below that levl would trigger a federal shortage declaration and mandatory usage cuts. Currently, Lake Mead is 1,082 feet high.